When you search using an internet search engine like Google, search engines have databases filled with web pages that have been crawled by robots. The robots gather information from web servers and analyze the content to create searchable indexes. Search engines return results based on matches between your search terms and the indexes. There are two main types of search engines - robot-driven search engines that use robots to automatically crawl and index web pages, and directory search engines that are manually constructed indexes of websites. You can use search engines to find websites on topics you input through keyword searches or browsing categories.